Oct 24, 2003 01:44 pm Hey thanks for the link forty! Some great reading there. Now to see if it makes any difference for me LOL
Dan
great mastering guide
Posted on Oct 23, 2003 08:56 pm
fortymile
Member Since: Jan 18, 2003
i'd just like to point this out:
www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/guides.html
download the ozone .pdf guide and check it out. i love izotope's guides. if i weren't so lazy, i could learn so much from them. complicated stuff explained in total dudespeak, without skimping on the 'why' or 'how.' they explain multiband dynamics and multiband eq very well here. compression tips, exciters, limiters...lots of stuff pertaining to the mastering process.
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Oct 24, 2003 01:44 pm Hey thanks for the link forty! Some great reading there. Now to see if it makes any difference for me LOL
Dan
Oct 24, 2003 05:58 pm they have a dithering guide there too. what is dithering?
Oct 24, 2003 06:56 pm Yep, the Mastering guide is great. I've read through it (And I think I posted about it a long time ago, too). Well, if you want to know about dithering, why not read the guide ;)
Oct 25, 2003 09:12 am Well, I myself haven't read it although I definitely should, since I'm also fairly clueless on the subject. I just record in 44.1/16-bit all the time so I don't have to worry about dithering. Dithering basically takes something recorded at a higher sampling or bit rate and converts it to a lower one while still preserving some of the higher quality. I don't know if you've ever seen dithering done in a graphics program, but it's a very similar concept only in an audio form. When you use it in a graphics program you have to get rid of a lot of the color data, but you compensate for it by putting little different colored pixels here and there to make it look more like one color fades into another-- If that makes any sense.
Oct 25, 2003 02:07 pm yeah it sorta makes sense. i'm trying to think of an analogy using cooking or something, but i can't think of 'things that depend on resolution.'
Oct 25, 2003 02:52 pm The big advantage I see in recording at a higher bit rate is the extra headroom, and higher accuracy when using effects. CEP and I'm pretty Sonar, Cubase etc, all work at 32 bit resolution or higher as is the case of programs such as Ozone by default during mixing. Every effect you use in digital recording adds some noise/artifacts, degradation to the signal, using higher bit resolution keeps it to a minimum. When finally down sampled to 16 bit you <in theory at least> have a much higher quality recording.
Dan
Oct 25, 2003 02:56 pm if only i had the processing power...my pc can only handle four tracks at a time without stalling!
Oct 25, 2003 07:04 pm By "headroom" what exactly do you mean? This has always confused me. I've never noticed any difference in physical headroom while using a higher bit-depth, but are you using headroom to mean something else?
Oct 25, 2003 10:59 pm In digital recording the maximum that can be represented by 16bits is -32767 to +32768 so when you go above 0 the the input gets truncated or wraps around causing distortion/artifacts. Using 32bits the maximum range that can be represented is roughly +/- 2 billion, 24bits gives you roughly +/- 2 million and that is why DVD's sound better than CD's.
Dan
Oct 26, 2003 12:35 am OK, I'm going to take a crack at this one too -- got lots of time on my hands tonight while I'm waiting up for my daughter to get home from her gig. 16 bit (CD quality) sampling gives you 10*log(2^16) = 48 dB worth of of dynamic range (which is more than most human hearing can appreciate in a given rooom / ambient noise setting). So, why do you need 24 bits, which BTW gives you 10*log(2^24) = 72 dB worth of dynamic range? The answer is only for recording, but even then you can probably get by with 16 bits. It's just that 24 bits is much more forgiving. If you are recording, you should set your devices towards the end of the audio chain to lower input & output levels, eg mixer faders, mixer output levels, sound card recording levels. That allows the peaks in the sound to get thru to the recorder without clipping.
So anyway this 24 bit (72 dB) of dynamic range is great in that its more forgiving of non-optimum recording levels (as long as you err on the low side). This all assumes that you've taken great pains to obtain a high Signal to Noise Ratio. Practically speaking most home studios won't ever attain the 24 bit (72 dB) dynamic range, because you'll run into the noise on the bottom end. Hope this helps. Enuf rambling for tonight.
Oct 26, 2003 01:19 am Bob, i'm not good with math, especially not calculus or whatever, but i'm sure 16bit gives you something like 96dB. with -96 being silence and 0 being loudest. it might have something to do with the exponential curve that we hear things on? i thought i read somewhere that either 20 or 24 bit gives you 108dB ??
Oct 26, 2003 08:07 pm OK Jamie,
Come to think of it you're right, I should have been using the formula for dB as a function of voltage instead of power, ie dB(v) = 20 * log(v2/v1). So, as you said 16 bits gives you 20*log(2^16) = 96 dB and 24 bits gives you 20*log(2^24) = 145 dB. Thanks for catching that. Anyway my main point was that your dynamic range is only as good as the noisiest device in the chain. If you can keep your end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (eg from mic -> preamp -> mixer -> souncard) significantly better than 96 dB (16 bits) then headroom can be achieved by going to 24 bits, reducing the need for h/w input compression and allowing for more post processing options without loss of quality.
Oct 26, 2003 08:37 pm So what we're talking about here is signal-to-noise ratio. Now I'm starting to get it. I don't know why that has anything to do with losing quality with post processing options, but I'll figure that out eventually. Interesting.
Oct 28, 2003 08:02 pm Oh wow, Izotope's got a new site and a new effects plug in that looks pretty darn sweet. 2.1 Ozone update too. Very cool. Plus, it looks like all their plug-ins are going to be available as ProTools plug-ins along with Direct X soon. Maybe VST will be next...? Izotope is awesome :)
Oct 28, 2003 09:52 pm what effects program? do you mean trash? trash looks amazing. too bad i don't do distortion that way.
Oct 28, 2003 11:29 pm I'm playin with demo (do i like demo's or what <G>) of Ozone and I'm impressed. It doesn't do anything that CEP can't already do, but it does it with alot less fuss & bother. Now if it were only about $100 less :)
Dan
Oct 30, 2003 06:38 pm Fortymile- No, they've had Trash for a while. I'm talking about "Spectron," which is brand new.
Oct 30, 2003 08:52 pm yeah i've seen that mentioned somewhere. whats it do?
Oct 31, 2003 08:23 am I guess it allows you to split up a signal into a bunch of different frequencies and add effects to each frequency range separately to make some really cool noises :) Sounds like a neat idea.
Oct 31, 2003 08:31 pm I read the dithering guide. Very cool. I'm going to start recording in 24-bit from now on, or at least when I upgrade my computer memory :) It was pretty clear for such a difficult concept. They even used my same comparison to graphic dithering that I tried to explain earlier! (I didn't know that was in there before...)
Oct 31, 2003 09:36 pm Bob, your my hero! you gave a good, if not great explination of signal to nosie, 16 bit recording and 24 bit recording... good man!
Nov 02, 2003 11:49 am Ghetto,
Glad that was a help. I've got some signal processing knowledge from the type of work that I do. So when it comes to electrons, ones, and zeros, every now & then I can kick in my 2 cents ... But I'm still behind the curve in gaining all the pratical experience needed for high quality home recording. This site has been mucho help to me along those lines.
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